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Background: Prior to college, many students have no experience with engineering, but some ultimately choose an engineering career. Women choose engineering at lower rates than men. This article uses critical engineering agency (CEA) to understand first-year students' attitudes and self-beliefs to predict the choice of an engineering career. Purpose/Hypothesis: We investigated how first-year students' math and physics identities and students' beliefs about the ability of science to improve the world predict choice of engineering as a career and whether these beliefs differ by gender. Design/Method: The data were from the Sustainability and Gender in Engineering survey distributed during fall 2011 (N = 6,772). Structural equation modeling was used to understand first-year students' affective beliefs for predicting engineering career choice. Results: Math and physics identities are important for predicting engineering choice at the beginning of college. Recognition from others and interest in a subject are positive predictors of physics and math identities. Students' performance/competence beliefs alone are negative predictors of engineering career choice but are mediated by interest and recognition from others. Student identities and agency beliefs are significant predictors of engineering career choice, explaining 20% of the variance. We also found gender differences in students' math and physics identities and agency beliefs. Conclusions: This article emphasizes the importance of students' recognition beliefs and the importance of agency beliefs for women in predicting engineering career choice.

Background: Sustainability is increasingly a vital consideration for engineers. Improved understanding of how attention to sustainability influences student major and career choice could inform efforts to broaden participation in engineering. Purpose: Two related questions guided our research. How do career outcome expectations related to sustainability predict the choice of an engineering career? Which broader sustainability-related outcomes do students perceive as related to engineering? To address both questions, we compared effects for engineering and nonengineering students while controlling for various confounding variables. Design/Method: We conducted a survey to collect responses about sustainability and other variables of interest from a national sample of college students in introductory English classes. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and correlational analysis. Results: Students who hope to address certain sustainability issues such as energy, climate change, environmental degradation, and water supply are more likely to pursue engineering. Those who hope to address other sustainability issues such as opportunities for women and minorities, poverty, and disease are less likely to do so. Students hoping to address sustainability-related outcome expectations with obvious human relevance are less likely to pursue engineering. Yet those students who perceive "improving quality of life" and "saving lives" as associated with engineering are more likely to pursue the profession. Conclusions: Our results suggest that showing students the connection between certain sustainability issues and engineering careers could help those striving to increase and diversify participation in engineering. A broader range of engineers would likely bring new ideas and ways of thinking to engineering for sustainability.

Background Prior to college, many students have no experience with engineering, but some ultimately choose an engineering career. Women choose engineering at lower rates than men. This article uses critical engineering agency (CEA) to understand first-year students' attitudes and self-beliefs to predict the choice of an engineering career. Purpose/Hypothesis We investigated how first-year students' math and physics identities and students' beliefs about the ability of science to improve the world predict choice of engineering as a career and whether these beliefs differ by gender. Design/Method The data were from the Sustainability and Gender in Engineering survey distributed during fall 2011 ( N = 6,772). Structural equation modeling was used to understand first-year students' affective beliefs for predicting engineering career choice. Results Math and physics identities are important for predicting engineering choice at the beginning of college. Recognition from others and interest in a subject are positive predictors of physics and math identities. Students' performance/competence beliefs alone are negative predictors of engineering career choice but are mediated by interest and recognition from others. Student identities and agency beliefs are significant predictors of engineering career choice, explaining 20% of the variance. We also found gender differences in students' math and physics identities and agency beliefs. Conclusions This article emphasizes the importance of students' recognition beliefs and the importance of agency beliefs for women in predicting engineering career choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]